17国际贸易.pptVIP

Comparative Advantage and International Trade Goods and services purchased from other countries are imports; goods and services sold to other countries are exports. Globalization is the phenomenon of growing economic linkages among countries. To understand why international trade occurs and why economists believe it is beneficial to the economy, we will first review the concept of comparative advantage. The following graph illustrates the growing importance of international trade… The Growing Importance of International Trade Production Possibilities and Comparative Advantage, Revisited Let’s repeat the definition of comparative advantage from earlier: A country has a comparative advantage in producing a good or service if the opportunity cost of producing the good or service is lower for that country than for other countries. The Ricardian model of international trade analyzes international trade under the assumption that opportunity costs are constant. Autarky is a situation in which a country cannot trade with other countries. The following figure shows hypothetical production possibility frontiers for the U.S. and Colombia and we assume that: there are only two goods and the production possibility frontiers are straight lines. Comparative Advantage and the Production Possibility Frontier The Gains from International Trade The Ricardian model of international trade shows that trade between two countries makes both countries better off than they would be in autarky—that is, there are gains from trade. The following tables and figures illustrate that specialization has the effect of increasing total world production of both goods and that each country can consume more of both goods than it did under autarky. Production and Consumption Under Autarky Production and Consumption After Specialization and Trade The Gains from International Trade Sources of Comparative Advantage The main sources of comparative advantage are: International differences in climate Dif